Secrets
by skyewardfitzsimmonsphilinda
Summary: Written for this prompt for skyeward-fanfiction.: "Skye fails the polygraph test because she's trying to protect her 0-8-4 status and Coulson & May's knowledge of it. Ward finds out."


_"Skye fails the polygraph test because she's trying to protect her 0-8-4 status and Coulson & May's knowledge of it. Ward finds out." _

The team was lined up outside of the room holding Agent Koenig's lie detector, and they were all shifting nervously.

"It amazes me," Coulson said quietly, dropping the words in Skye's ear so only she could hear. "That the people we trust with our lives don't trust us with their secrets. And it terrifies me."

Skye looked up at him sadly, and saw that he was watching May. "I can't imagine what it was like for you," she said, her forehead crinkling in sympathy. "Finding out about May."

Coulson's lips tightened almost imperceptibly, and he looked away. "Listen, there's something you need to do."

"You got it, AC. What's up?"

"I've trusted the wrong people," Coulson said quietly as May disappeared into Koenig's room. "And I've trusted too many people. So do me a favor, Skye, and don't. Trust. Anyone."

Skye cocked her head, confused. "Are you implying something about our team?"

"I'm implying that what I told you about… the 0-8-4? Keep that between the two of us."

"Even from Koenig?"

"Even from Koenig," Coulson said firmly. "I trust him. I could even say I like him. But we have no idea who may be watching while you're in there, and I don't trust anyone else."

May emerged then, and Fitz and Simmons entered the room together. Triplett followed them, and Coulson left as Skye stood to take her turn.

"You ready, Rookie?" Ward called, and she turned back to see him leaning against the wall, watching her.

"Oh, come on, Tin Man, this team already knows my dirty secrets," Skye said. "I mean, I've hacked into nearly everything S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted to be kept safe, so it's not like I'll ever be number one on the people-they-trust list."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Who's on the people-you-trust list?"

Skye smiled up at him, stepping so close she was almost touching him. "This team," she said softly, and he looked down at her, his gaze almost sad. "You."

A muscle in his cheek jerked as if her words pained him, but it drew her attention to his scars.

"You know when I said before that you looked badass?" Skye said, her fingers tracing the lines of his face gently, and he did not flinch. "I didn't mean—well, I meant—I know it was a big deal. I know how much Garrett meant to you, and I'm just… I'm sorry. And I get it."

His eyes flamed suddenly, and he opened his mouth, but she cut him off.

"I just mean I get it. I know what it's like when someone you trust turns on you," she said, and the note of steel in her voice almost frightened her. "And it's pure hell."

Ward stepped back, but before he looked away Skye caught a glimpse of something in his face—fear? Sadness? Regret?—and then he turned away. "You should go. Koenig's waiting."

Koenig's questions were easy enough, although Skye overanalyzed most of them anyway.

"One last question, Skye. What do you know about your past?"

"What do you mean about my past? I grew up in an orphanage."

"And who placed you there?"

Skye hesitated, remembering Coulson's words, and Koenig looked at her critically.

Hadn't he said it was a lie detector Agent Romanoff couldn't beat? But Skye hadn't been trained to keep secrets, she had grown up hounded by the desperate knowledge that she had to keep secrets which could hurt her—secrets from the other children in the orphanage, secrets from the foster parents who didn't care enough to stick around, secrets from the directors, even secrets from Miles.

Before Skye had worked to expose S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secrets, she had been an expert at keeping her own.

"I don't know," she said steadily, her breath even, and Koenig relaxed.

"Did you ever view the documents?"

"The documents were redacted," Skye says truthfully. "I knew nothing about myself, not my name, not my family name, not my parents' names."

"Alright, thank you, Agent Skye. I have your lanyard for you here."

When Skye exited, dangling her lanyard for Ward to see, he barely cracked a smile, and then quickly moved past her to take his own test.

Later, when she was alone in her bunk room on her laptop, Ward found her again.

"Hey."

"Hey," she said without looking up.

"Can we talk?" he asked uncertainly, and she looked up this time, trying to smile.

"Sure. Sit down. Sorry—just a bit busy. You know, the usual. Trying to take down an evil super-spy organization that tried to have me killed once."

Ward flinched at her words, and she paused in her work.

"Hey," she said softly, taking his hand. "It's okay. You freak out a little bit every time I say anything about that."

"Well, you freaked me out a lot by _almost fucking dying_," he said, annoyance in his voice, and Skye just grinned.

"What did you want to talk about?"

"I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

Skye withdrew her hand and started typing again quickly. "I'm fine. I'm just not a huge fan of reliving my past in front of complete strangers."

"I know," he said softly, and Skye felt her throat clench with emotion.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that," she managed, and this time she closed her laptop. No barriers now and the way Grant was looking at her—like she was the only light in the darkening room—almost took her breath away. "I know how you hate talking about your past."

"Not with you," he said, looking down. "With you, it's easy."

"Because I understand it."

"But why?" he asked suddenly, his eyes fierce as he looked at her. "Why? I know what you've seen, what you must've seen, because I see the way you look at me when I talk about my brothers, but you never say. You've never told me a single thing about yourself. Not even your last name."

"That's because there's nothing to tell," Skye said, her voice shaking just a little. "I don't even _have_ a last name. I grew up in an orphanage, and the person who left me there… she was a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, but she wasn't my mother. She wasn't related to me at all, and no one will ever know who my family was, because the entire S.H.I.E.L.D. team assigned to protect me died doing that."

The look in Grant's eyes was one of devastation. Devastation for her sake. "I'm so sorry," he whispered, taking her hand gently in his calloused, battered ones.

"I was an 0-8-4, Ward," Skye continued, her voice almost breaking. "I cost good men and women their lives, and I don't even know why. I don't even know where I came from, so how the hell am I supposed to know who I am?"

Ward's eyes bored into hers, and she knew he was thinking of his brothers again. "Sometimes it's better not to know where you're from," he said roughly. "I sure as hell wish I didn't."

Skye looked down, terrified that when she looked up she would see all the sadness and the fury and the darkness in his eyes that felt like looking into a mirror of her past; a mirror of the bitter orphan who once was.

_Six hours later. _

_A secure com channel to an unknown location. _

_Ward. His voice cold. "I've found the 0-8-4, sir. It's her." _

"_Bring her to me." _

_The line goes dead. _

_And Grant Ward sinks against the wall of his tiny bunk room, his entire body shaking with silent sobs; shaking with the weight of the unforgivable. Because how do you choose between the two people you care about the most? How do you choose a life debt over the variable you were not supposed to fall in love with? What do you do when you have to choose one to rescue, and one to lose? _

The same time, Skye's bunk room. A secure com channel to an unknown location and a hacker who has made sure that no com channel is secure.

She felt herself sink to the ground in shock. Numb.

Her body was shaking—because she knew the truth about the man she trusted, and more than that, she can hear the truth in the broken emotion coming from the man in the room next to hers, and she knows.

Worse, she understood

That faced with an impossible choice, he had made the only one he had ever known how to make, and Skye knew what this meant.

It meant that Grant Ward had made an enemy—an unwilling enemy with a shattered heart—but an enemy all the same.

And Skye had never been an enemy to be underestimated.


End file.
